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| Africa North | |
| 'A shield and a sword’ - The inside story of Egypt's 1973 victory over Israel | |
| 2022-05-01 | |
General Mohammed Fawzi, who served as minister of defence after the June 1967 War, wrote in his memoirs: "The War of Attrition [1967-1970] was an urgent necessity for Egypt and the Arabs and its value was demonstrated in the expertise acquired by the leadership, the Office of the Chief-of-Staffs and other agencies which, once they were reorganised on modern scientific bases, began to ready themselves to liberate the territory that had been usurped by force." Fawzi’s remarks provide the context for General Chief-of-Staff Mohammed Abbas Mansour’s account of the artillery corps’ preparations for the battle to liberate Sinai. He was a lieutenant colonel at the time, and appointed as an artillery commander in 1973. | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #8 #6 - LOLOLOL |
| Posted by: Frank G 2022-05-01 22:06 |
| #7 The fact that the Egyptian army fought well at the beginning of the war is true, compared to its performance in previous wars, but nevertheless its army in the Sinai was cut off from supplies and forced to surrender, and Egypt was only rescued from complete loss of that army by international pressure from the USA and USSR. That army was forced to give up all its weapons, if my memory is correct. |
| Posted by: In 2022-05-01 20:31 |
| #6 “ The artillery fire was sustained for 22 minutes, firing 175 rounds a second” . Today’s math problem… |
| Posted by: Marilyn Angolunter6620 2022-05-01 19:32 |
| #5 Lots of top commanders, when asked about their greatest victories, said "We got lucky..." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-05-01 12:37 |
| #4 I always wondered why the Egyptian Army that performed so poorly in 1948, 1956, and 1967 did so well in 1973. They had excuses in 1956, for example, but why did the Egyptians do so well during the period during and immediately following the Canal Crossing and then quickly lapse back into mediocrity thereafter? Kenneth M. Pollack's Arabs At War: 1948-1991 (2004) in its Egyptian chapter has an intriguing theory. That they did not get better at combined arms warfare and tactics. His supposition is that the Egyptian High Command read the Israeli books on doctrine, marked out the locations of the Israeli units and then the Staff wargamed, wargamed and then wargamed so more. Instead of uniformly upgrading their junior officers skills they instead developed a step-by-step series of instructions to "Move here, do that, and form a defense here against the Israelis that will show up there" all orchestrated like the instructions to a play. Then wargamed it again and again until they had the best plan... This worked great at the beginning and was *cough* "not so great" during the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army (they Israelis just refused to do the things they were expecting). |
| Posted by: magpie 2022-05-01 12:29 |
| #3 /\ I have visited and participated in a number of these overseas conflicts or misadventures. Permit me to share my observations if you will. It is my belief that political strife, conflict, and war are the seed corn of the Military Industrial Complex or MIC. War has become our business, and a vanquished enemy is bad for business. Victory is no longer a component of the equation. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2022-05-01 12:12 |
| #2 Well, after the six day war defeat the Egyptians had the character to be honest with themselves and conduct a thorough AAR...and realize and learn from the hard lessons defeat taught them...And they improved dramatically. We on the other hand, have not done the same after getting our ass handed to us in Afghanistan last year or learning from the whole 9/11 attack. And we are likely not learning from what is happening on the Southern border...where a shadowy asymmetric proxy war is being waged against us by China. We didn't learn from the Chinese successful proxy war either with our overt virtue signaling proxy war in the Ukraine, where we stupidly announce every bit of tech and aid that we send to the Ukrainians...and the Russians simply wait for it to hit the ground and target the aid with precision long range missile fire...we are led by absolute idiots. |
| Posted by: Tennessee 2022-05-01 11:56 |
| #1 Pretty much the same paradigm as Disney executives thinking support for grooming is "popular." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2022-05-01 09:51 |